What a Field Day for the Heat

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" Shut de do, keep out de debbil. Shut de do, keep de debbil in the night. Shut de do, keep out de debbil. Light a candle, everything's all right. Light a candle, everything's all right!

Let's be clear on one thing. "The Gods Are Bored" is not a Satanic or demonic web site. Satan is not bored. He's busy as ... hell. So if you want to gain his ear, please toddle off elsewhere.

What's that? You're a disgruntled teenaged child of fundamentalist Christian parents, you've had it with Father God and his shifting sand rule book, and you want to find a portal to nastiness with Old Scratch? In short, you're Christian, but you want to be Satanic?

You've got the pantheon right. With God goes Satan. Old Scratch is part of the package. And that, young disgruntled teenager, is why you went to a local Wicca gathering and felt cheated. Nice ladies, dancing in circles, waving scarves around, praying for peace in the Four Quarters? You wanted to kill a kitten, and they would have none of it!

What now, teenager?

My guess is that you've tried the family computer, only to find it safely Nortoned against de debbil. So, why don't you look in the family library?

This week we've have a "Gods Are Bored" series on a book called Deliver Us from Evil: Putting a Stop to the Occult Influences Invading Your Home and Community, by Cindy Jacobs. As its title suggests, this is a book for good Christians who are worried, either because they're having sexy dreams about the cute neighbor covered in whipped cream, or their kids are going through pet gerbils a little too quickly.

Follow my logic:

1. Christian mom worries that her disgruntled teenager might be dabbling in the occult, so she buys a Christian book to tell her what signs to look for.

2. The selfsame book, chock-a-block with names of major Satanic groups, heavy metal bands, occult symbols, and lurid details of demonic sexual seduction and murder, finds its way onto the coffee table, only lightly hidden by Highlights for Children Magazine.

3. Disgruntled teenager finds the book. And promptly uses it as a how-to guide for launching a career in Satanism.

This, to my mind, is one of the biggest dangers of a book like Deliver Us from Evil. Cindy Jacobs "exposes" Satanism so well that you could dive right into its worst abuses just from reading her tract.

Teenager, have you heard of the Church of Satan, The Satanic Bible, the Necronomicon, Anton LaVey, the Temple of Set, Aleister Crowley, or Nietzsche? Cindy Jacobs tells you about them. Not with any kind of accuracy, mind you, but she gives you names to research. On Saturday, armed with Mrs. Jacobs's most helpful book, you ride your bike to the public library and ... by cracky ... here's stuff in the encyclopedia about Aleister Crowley, the Illuminati, the Hellfire Club, and Anton LaVey!

Readers please note: We at "The Gods Are Bored" do not consider Aleister Crowley a Satanist, although he took delight in being called one. Nor do we consider the Illuminati a Satantist organization. It's not even really an organization. Unless you're a paranoid fundamentalist, hunting for debbils.

Why, just by reading Mrs. Jacobs's chapter on black magic, I myself learned how to make an ironclad fetish, sure to bring a church pastor to sexual sin if buried in the rectory lawn!

Thanks for the info, Mrs. J., but I'll take a pass. Of course, I'm not a disgruntled fundie teen. I'm a sensible Pagan with morals.

Now you're saying, "Really, Anne. If kids don't become Pagans by reading Harry Potter, are they likely to become Satanists by reading Cindy Jacobs?"

Let's use a local example. My daughter The Heir also uses this computer. Deliver Us from Evil has been sitting here on the desk for a few weeks. The Heir has been reading it in snippets, here and there. She had never heard of Nietzche. She asked me about him. I couldn't give her much of an answer, but by golly the Internet did. I'm 100 percent certain The Heir is not inclined to embrace Nazism, but if she was, Mrs. Jacobs just gave her a superb launching pad.

We at "The Gods Are Bored" denounce Christianity's Satan as a bad blighter. We repeat that he is not a bored god. But if you want to learn more about making him happy, Deliver Us from Evil is a first-class primer on the topic.

And please don't neglect Mrs. Jacobs's fine Appendix of Occult Signs the next time you're off to the cemetery to desecrate graves. Cindy Jacobs, be forewarned: I bought this book in the land of my ancestors, and if their tombstones get slathered with Mark of the Beast signs, I'm gonna buy you a scrub brush and some Mr. Clean and put you to work!

Guest Blogger Explains Halloween

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" Anne and her daughters are toddling around doing errands and shopping for Halloween costumes. And I just happened to be in the neighborhood. And she left her computer running.

Bad girl, Anne! Wasting energy!

I am best known as Satan, Prince of Darkness, Lucifer the fallen Angel, Beelzebub, and about another dozen atrocious monikers. All of them embarrassing to someone trying to pad his resume for work as a deity. So please, will you call me "Mr. Applegate?" Thank you ever so much.

There's a considerable amount of confusion over the upcoming holiday, Halloween. More and more Christians out on the fringe are teaching their tots that this night of enjoyment and imagination is all about me, and nothing but me.

These are the same kind of Christians who arrive at my gates wailing and gnashing their teeth because once, just once, in their lives they got drunk and cheated on the old spouse, and then were too embarrassed to tell anyone and they died before they could spill it out and get it forgiven.

See what I have to put up with? Talk about a thankless job.

So today, I, Mr. Applegate, will explain to you how I got drawn into this Halloween business. It's not a pretty story.

It starts when I signed a contract to work for a small-time deity working a lightly-populated planet. This deity's praise and worship team at the time consisted mostly of a group of sheep-herding people in the Middle East, related to each other through tribe and clan. The gig seemed to have a nice enough deity, and a nice enough praise and worship team.

I signed without reading the fine print.

Big mistake. I had been hired to be the bad guy, the enforcer, the evil dude that kept all the people toeing the line. I got sent to the satellite office, charged with torturing dead folks for eternity.

That's when I sent the contract to my cousin who's a Fire Spirit for a pretty little planet in the Crab Nebula. He showed me a clause that gets me out of the job after a 10,000-year stint. I can either shutter the contract or negotiate better terms. And you can best bet what I'm gonna do. I'm outta here, even if I have to become mortal!

The deity I signed with turned out to be very ambitious. He set out on a course of world domination, sending the conflicting messages that such deities tend to do when they work the monotheism pathway. He became even more successful than he expected. But some places he met with resistance. Inevitably.

One of these places was the British Isles, where for thousands of years the praise and worship teams had practiced a faith that considered October 31 the last day of the year because it marked the end of the harvest. The October 31 harvest holiday included equal measures of serious worship and frivolous play and was so ingrained in the people that they simply would not give it up. It became a divisive issue between the priests of my boss's religion and the priests of the older religions (which, I might add, have some lovely deities in them).

The boss called me to the corporate headquarters and told me he planned to have his priests link me to the harvest holiday. He said emphatically that he wanted me to put on my formal attire and stroll around visibly during that period of time. He said further that he wanted me to urge all my followers to use that night for evil mischief. (Yeah, go figure, I've got followers. And yes indeed, they are rank morons.)

I've got a contract, I've got a supervisor. If I get fired ... there's that damn word again, fire ... I'll be considered insubordinate. It's a short gig, 10,000 years. So I went with the program.

Out comes the red devil duds, and off I go, inciting troubled youths to murder kittens and paint 666 on the sides of churches. All on a Halloween night. All in the name of a matching 401K plan.

Please don't tell my mother about this, she'll be too humiliated to attend her rainbow-painting classes -- and she loves to make rainbows!

One of the lowest moments in this job for me was the day the ancient deities who were really responsible for Halloween came to me and asked me kindly to cease and desist. I had to pull out my contract and show it to them. I had to admit I'd signed it before reading the fine print. I could see Their opinion of me go plummeting into the pit of .... oh hell.

Can I be completely candid? I have nothing to do with Halloween. I got grafted onto it to make it evil in the sight of my boss's praise and worship team.

I've only got a little less than 4,000 years to go on this contract, and I'm a free agent again. What makes me think that by that time, educated folks will call my boss a "myth," and he'll be losing at shuffleboard to some of the very deities he displaced?

Have a truly happy Halloween!

MR. APPLEGATE

Wanted: One Good Satan

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," where we ... emm, excuse me.

(sniff sniff)

The cats are running for the crawlspace, and the sulfurous odors are multiplying by the second. That can only mean one thing...


Oh, yes. Here he is, my old ancestor Satan. Looking quite the picture in his evening attire.

Satan: Please call me "Mr. Applegate," Anne. You know I hate all those devil names.

Anne: And I hate you. So there! How about if I call you Stinky? It's more precise.

Applegate: Go ahead. Hurt my feelings. Where's your compassion? How would you like to have my job?



Anne: Not much, Stinky. (For my newer readers out there, I'd like to note that I allow Satan to vent on my blog because I'm not afraid of him. I've got my afterlife booked with a different carrier.)


Applegate: I heard that. Actually I applaud it. The waiting lines in the One God terminal get longer every day.


Anne: Actually, Stinky, there was something I wanted to talk to you about.


Applegate: Fire away ... pardon the pun.


Anne: I just read an article by Los Angeles Times writer Geoff Boucher about an entrepreneur who is planning to issue an audio performance of the entire Revised King James Bible on CDs. That's 70 in all.


Applegate: That's correct. It's called "The Word of Promise," and the first 20 CDs, New Testament, will be out in October ... hopefully.


Anne: It's that "hopefully" part that intrigues me, Stinky. Apparently the director, Carl Amari, has cast all the characters in the NT except you. He's got Jim Caviezel doing Jesus (talk about a typecast you'd want to avoid), Luke Perry as Judas, and Marisa Tomei as Mary Magdalene. But no one wants to be the devil.


Applegate: Even though I've got the best lines.


Anne: I had nothing better to do today than think this over, and I came up with some actors who might fit the bill. I've never quite been able to shake Alec Baldwin's performance in Glengarry Glen Ross. What do you think of Alec Baldwin?


Applegate: I saw that movie too! Yikes! Chilling.


Anne: Aren't you going to help me here? Steve Tyler came to mind until I saw the YouTube posted at Jesus' General.


Applegate: That's worse than chilling. I'd call that performance "The Taming of the Shrill." Please, no Steve Tyler. Dream on.


Anne: Why should it be up to me? You're Satan. You must have some idea who sounds the most like you.


Applegate: Sarah Vaughan.


Anne: Yeah, right. Right. I can believe that. Okay, I'm ready to buy the Brooklyn Bridge now.


Applegate: No, I'm serious. See, you earthlings don't know about me. In my prior post, on a beautiful little planet in the Crab Nebula, I was the god of singing for a perfectly adorable praise and worship team. Oh, the music we made! (wipes tears)


Anne: Some of my more recent readers won't know the backstory. Fill them in.


Applegate: Meteor the size of Pluto smashed into the planet. My pantheon had to tighten its belt since it wasn't getting any new angels into its afterlife. I was let go.


Anne: So you can sing like Sarah Vaughan. Prove it.


Applegate: "Whatever Lola wants ... Lola gets ... and little man, Lola wants you..."


Anne: By damn, you weren't kidding! You sound just like The Divine One!


Applegate: Duhhhhh. I am divine!


Anne: I don't think they'll find any musical divas of that high quality willing to be Satan on a 20-CD rendering of the New Testament. But maybe that Sanjay guy is available.


Applegate: That's it. I'm leaving. I'm not standing around here to be insulted anymore!


Anne: Said it before, say it again. Don't let the door bump your tail as you go. And stay away from my sofa!


FROM ANNE
THE MERLIN OF BERKELEY SPRINGS


PS - No one will believe me, but I wrote this entry before hearing the Baldwin rant on Countdown with Keith Friday night.